I still used to frequent it all the way up to last month, for some interesting discussions. But now… it’s really become AI-pro[1] and any post that even hints about AI existentialism gets immediately cut down.

I find it hard to browse the site anymore, and lament the loss of expert tech discussion in my weekly routine.

  1. Yes, I know it’s been that way for a while, but either I’m feeling it more or the bots have gamed the website to the point that all you see are announces from big tech companies or people going on about their AI solutions ↩︎

  • floofloof ( floofloof@lemmy.ca ) 
    44·
    5 days ago

    I’ve found it intolerable for a long time, with its mixture of techbro conformism, fad-chasing and self-hype, but it’s even worse these days. AI boosters are so obnoxious that they’re actually doing valuable work putting people off AI.

    • calliope ( calliope@retrolemmy.com ) 
      10·
      5 days ago

      I’m personally glad it’s causing more people to notice instead of being sucked into the fad-chasing and thinking it’s real.

      That has been Hacker News since the beginning, different people just notice at different times.

      I met so many young people who wouldn’t shut up about things they barely knew about because they “heard it from the experts” on Hacker News… in 2013.

      I might be misremembering, but I think DHH was celebrated as a coding genius constantly on HN back in 2006 when Rails was initially coming out. They loved that he was the ultimate tech bro. I wonder what they think of Omarchy…

      It’s always been the same kind of garbage.

    • sus ( sus@programming.dev ) 
      4·
      5 days ago

      Maybe there is something wrong with me but the “bad things are actually good because revealed preference” people and similar are the highlights of that site at this point. There is just something fascinating about it.

    • tetris11 ( tetris11@feddit.uk ) OPEnglish
      20·
      5 days ago

      Yeah… I mean it’s not a monolith in that respect, you do get the hippie crowd speaking up every now and then and sometimes shouting the techbro’s down, but it’s far and few between these days.

      God I remember when I first got into programming and ran into the different communities and just assumed that all programmers were left-wing liberal artists expressing their individuality and building a shared common future that all would benefit from.

      And then I had the culture shock of meeting programmers who… had different ideas about the purpose of what they were creating, and somehow it never crossed my mind that some people just… really love money. Not need it – they have their investments, they’re comfortable, they wouldn’t need to work a day in their life at their present rate – but it’s not enough, and they want more, and programming is a means to achieve that and are happy to sponge off the collective efforts of others to further that goal.

      And that was the day I learned exactly what the purpose of the MIT license was for

      • tetris11 ( tetris11@feddit.uk ) OPEnglish
        8·
        5 days ago

        Their view is understandable if majorly flawed.

        They were people who rolled the dice on their interests early on, picked the winning combo of CS + Finance, and then just raced ahead in the career ladder over their peers as software work consumed the world.

        Now it’s ten years later, those ladders have disappeared, many of them are seeing the writing on the wall, and are wondering whether they were anything special at all.

        The answer of course is no, but it’s a tough pill to swallow. So cling on desperately to the idea that they can “bootstrap” themselves back into success

        In a roundabout way, I guess what I’m saying is that for the last few decades they have never needed to have any shred of sympathy for others, and believed that their success was derived purely from their own efforts and not from opportunities that existed at the beginning of their careers

  • kibiz0r ( kibiz0r@midwest.social ) English
    20·
    5 days ago

    That’s what happens when you curate a space to worship:

    1. Market efficiency
    2. Individualism
    3. Technological development

    …while insisting that those values are apolitical, and only ideas that conflict with those values are political.

    • tetris11 ( tetris11@feddit.uk ) OPEnglish
      4·
      5 days ago

      Yeah, it’s become a grift. Someone recently showed a new StumbleUpon type thing, which was a pretty fun way finding good content. I used it a lot on the first day. By the third day, the next few pages you’d visit were Big Tech landing pages…

      I knew the free lunch couldn’t last, but it couldn’t even let me finish breakfast?

  • Zedstrian ( Zedstrian@sopuli.xyz ) English
    8·
    5 days ago

    Didn’t try Hacker News until after I had already tried Lemmy, but it seemed to contrast here quite a bit in terms of being filled with pro-AI libertarians.

  • entwine ( entwine@programming.dev ) 
    7·
    5 days ago

    Yes. I still have the muscle memory of typing ‘H’ then enter on my phone browser whenever I’m bored, but lately I’ve been catching myself before hitting enter. I need to find another site that starts with H to take priority in my autocomplete.

    I also stopped using this site long ago, and only rarely check back in, although that’s due to all the obnoxious Redditisms rather than AI. There ain’t no “expert tech discussions” happening here.

    At this point I feel like a hermit, since there’s no social media I regularly use. It’s honestly pretty great, and I feel like I’m better at focusing on my work and enjoying real life in general.

    • tetris11 ( tetris11@feddit.uk ) OPEnglish
      5·
      5 days ago

      I can’t exactly put a finger on the redditisms, but do know what you mean about a topic snowballing into something else other than the original post. I don’t mind it so much when I can peer behind the veil of a FAANG company and get an employee perspective.

      I have been seeing some Maker/circuitry posts making it to the frontpage there, and there you do get some great tech discussions. But the software discussions have just fallen off the map.

      It’s a shame. I don’t really know where to go now for tech discussion. Lemmy scratches that itch partially, but it’s rare. My IRL friends don’t fully understand my hobbies. I do miss social media for connecting me with people who shared my enthusiasm over certain topics

  • misk ( misk@piefed.social ) English
    5·
    5 days ago

    I still use RSS from HN and got very good at ignoring continued torrent of people suffering from AI psychosis but even then I never bothered with comments there. Just a bunch of people who got into tech for all the wrong reasons. You’ll get more insight on a topic from a single expert on Mastodon than from an entire comment thread there.

    • tetris11 ( tetris11@feddit.uk ) OPEnglish
      3·
      5 days ago

      I want to like Mastodon, but I find it too disorienting – way too much noise over signal. Lemmy is too, but one can lurk in a space (politics, electronics, etc.) until something happens

      • misk ( misk@piefed.social ) English
        3·
        5 days ago

        Don’t follow noisy accounts and block boosts from accounts that abuse it but are otherwise interesting. Mastodon like Lemmy is entirely about how you set up your feed, nothing gets pushed to you unless you specifically sign up for it.

  • Kaul ( TheKaul@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English
    4·
    5 days ago

    I only started using it a year or 2 ago, but I do agree with you. Every time I’ve opened it the past few weeks, it’s AI this, AI that. I’ve basically stopped opening the app because it went from cool tech news with interesting discussions that made me feel like I was learning stuff, to repeated discussions about new AI models.